101 Teacher Quotes that Celebrate Educators

Teachers are invaluable contributors to society. They have the power to inspire, educate, and shape the minds and hearts of students. Their dedication, passion, and tireless efforts make a lasting impact on the lives of those they teach. Teachers nurture the personalities of their students and nourish their ideas. Throughout history, educators have left behind a treasure trove of wisdom and inspiration through their words. Teacher quotes encapsulate the essence of their noble profession – highlighting the power of education and the transformative potential within every student. Let’s explore some of the most inspiring quotes about teachers that remind us of their profound influence and the importance of their work.

Teacher Quotes

1. “If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.” ~ Guy Kawasaki

2. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ~ William Arthur Ward

3. “Teachers can change lives with the right mix of chalk and challenges.” ~ Joyce Meyer

4. “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” ~ Brad Henry

5. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” ~ Karl Menninger

6. “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.” ~ Ever Garrison
7. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” ~ Colleen Wilcox
8. “The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.” ~ Dorothea Dix
9. “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think” ~ Socrates
10. “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.” ~ Darwin D. Martin

Teacher Appreciation Quotes

11. “What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
12. “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” ~ John C. Maxwell
13. “Teaching is a calling too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy—angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.” ~ Jeannette Walls
14. “You can’t really teach a kid anything: you can only show him the way and motivate him to learn it himself.” ~ Dave Cullen
15. “Your heart is slightly larger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.” ~ Aaron Bacall
16. “I touch the future. I teach.” ~ Christa McAuliffe
17. “Of all the hard jobs around, one of the hardest is being a good teacher” ~ Maggie Gallagher
18. “The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.” ~ Marvin Phillips
19. “One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.” ~ Alan Bennett
20. “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” ~ Japanese proverb

Quotes about Teachers

21. “You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!” ~ Dr. Seuss 
22. “Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them.” ~ Josie Bisset
23. “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” ~ Lily Tomlin
24. “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” ~ Albert Einstein
25. “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
26. “I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.” ~ Edward de Bono
27. “You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” ~ Clay P. Bedford
28. “I’m not going to school just for the academics – I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.” ~ Emma Watson
29. “For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.” ~ Baltasar Gracian
30. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Teaching Quotes

31. “The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” ~ Anatole France
32. “Ask yourself: ‘Do I feel the need to laminate?’ Then teaching is for you.” ~ Gordon Korman
33. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre” ~ Gail Godwin
34. “Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions” ~ Anonymous
35. “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.” ~ Phil Collins
36. “Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.” ~ Paulo Coelho
37. “The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
38. “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” ~ Mark Van Doren
39. “Teaching is a little like weaving a piece of fabric. A weaver must have certain equipment and materials in order to create the desired design and color.” ~ Delia Halverson
40. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” ~ Bob Talbert

Teacher Quotes

41. “The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.” ~ John Lubbock
42. “A teacher is one who helps others and influences lives forever.” ~ Catherine Pulsifer
43. “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” ~ Scott Hayden
44. “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” ~ Carl Rogers
45. “Knowing is not enough; We must apply. Willing is not enough; We must do.” ~ Bruce Lee
46. “The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves” ~ Joseph Campbell
47. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” ~ Dr. Seuss
48. “Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.” ~ James E. Faust
49. “School is a place that provides education, and education is the key to life.” ~ Anonymous
50. “But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.” ~ Umberto Eco

Quotes about Teaching

51. “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” ~ Aristotle
52. “I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” ~ Robert Frost
53. “The teachers who get burned out are not the ones who are constantly learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay in control and ahead of the students at all times.” ~ Frank Martin
54. “I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy — I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” ~ Art Williams
55. “I taught you everything you know. But I didn’t teach you everything I know.” ~ Orson Scott Card
56. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
57. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
58. “In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.” ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki
59. “To teach is to learn twice over.” ~ Joseph Joubert
60. “The best teachers are the ones that change their minds.” ~ Terry Heick

Encouraging Words for Students from Teachers

61. “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid.” ~K. Chesterton
62. “Be curious, not judgmental.” ~ Walt Whitman
63. “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
64. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” ~ Oscar Wilde
65. “Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.” ~ George Evans
66. “Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.” ~ William Crawford
67. “It is not what is poured into the student, but what is planted, that counts.” ~ P. Bertin
68. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ~ Nelson Mandela
69. “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” ~ Chinese Proverb
70. “Work hard, be kind and amazing things will happen.” ~ Conan O’Brien

World Teachers Day Quotes

71. “School prepares you for the real world… which also bites.” ~ Jim Benton
72. “The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book for everything.” ~ Robert Frost
73. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” ~ Alexander the Great
74. “If the school sends out children with a desire for knowledge and some idea of how to acquire and use it, it will have done its work.” ~ Richard Livingstone
75. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
76. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” ~ Alexandra K. Trenfor
77. “When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.” ~ William Glasser
78. “Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.” ~ Ray Congdon
79. “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” ~ Buddha
80. “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” ~ William Butler Yeats

Best Teacher Quotes

81. “We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.” ~ Carol Burnett
82. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” ~ Albert Einstein
83. “One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.” ~ Malala Yousafzai
84. “Education doesn’t just make us smarter. It makes us whole.” ~ Jill Biden
85. “The fact that you worry about being a good teacher, means that you already are one.” ~ Jodi Picoult
86. “A well educated mind will always have more questions than answers.” ~ Helen Keller
87. “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” ~ Malcolm X
88. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” ~ Henry B. Adams
89. “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids to work together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” ~ Bill Gates
90. “We never know which lives we influence, or when or why.” ~ Stephen King

World Teachers Day Quotes

91. “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” ~ B. King
92. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ~ Margaret Mead
93. “Don’t just teach your children to read, teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything!” ~ George Carlin
94. “Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
95. “Every child deserves a champion—an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” ~ Rita Pierson
96. “Teaching is not a profession; it’s a passion. Without passion for your subject and a desire for your students to learn and be the best in the world, then we have failed as a teacher and failure is not an option.” ~ John F. Podojil
97. “The future of the world is in my classroom today.” ~ Ivan Welton Fitzwater
98. “To teach is to touch a life forever.” ~ Anonymous
99. “Children are like cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.” ~ Dr. Haim Ginott
100. “Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.” ~ Minna Thomas Antrim
101. “Genius without education is like silver in the mine.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Thank you for reading this. Which Teacher Quotes did you like in the above list? Please let us know your favorite Teacher Quotes in the comments section.

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